Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, An (2nd Edition)

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	• Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, An (2nd Edition) Bradley W. Carroll, Dale A. Ostlie Benjamin Cummings, 2006 - 1400 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent introductory book

C&O is the "almanac" of introductory astrophysics. Virtually every facet of astrophysics is beautifully presented with decent (albeit rather introductory) amounts of detail.

This book comes very highly recommended as an introductory "bible" to the second-year University student just entering astronomy. More than that, though, it's also an ever-lasting establishment on your bookshelf that, no matter how long you've had your PhD, you'll find yourself returning to rather frequently. This book is a clear must-have for the astronomer.

Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, An (2nd Edition)

Best Astrophysics for Undergraduate Course ! All Chapters fully explained with a lot of drills and updated with latest development on the field. Jose Quintero

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Overwhelming for 1 semester

I have just recently completed a 1-semester course using this book. It was taught tutorial-style where we were to read a chapter and come to class with questions on the book. This book has way too much information for one semester. The other students and I all agreed that we had to spend so much time trying to keep up with the current readings and homework from each chapter that there is really no way to learn & remember much from this book if it is taught in only 1 semester. We did omit a handful of chapters, the first 3, and the ones on the solar system, about 3-4 more in the middle of the book. If you are to teach the course, I reccomend you include chapter 3 because many subsequent chapters refer to it and I had to read the whole chapter anyway.
As for the content of the book, it is well organized and presented fairly clearly. Most of the math is followable to senior level students in the fields of physics and engineering. Discussions of many phenomenon are extremely thorough and multiple theories for phenomenon of unknown origin are presented.
As for complaints...
The authors are optical astronomers so there is a lot more information regarding this branch of astronomoy than there is for radio astronomy.
The solar system chapters are not that well put together, the reason our class decided to skip them.
The book contains a large number of errors. There is a list of corrections available on the publishers website, but it can still be confusing.
This book is getting old. In a field where there have been huge technical advances in the last 20 years, it might be wise to consider the new edition.

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Excellent

Any instructor who has used the first edition of this book can attest to its fine quality of presentation and its didactic power. The second edition continues this tradition, and in addition offers more material that reflects the many discoveries and developments in astrophysics that have taken place since the first edition. The observational tools in astronomy have become even more refined over the years since the first edition along with computing power, and these two facts combined with a robust community of theoreticians have pushed the limits of astrophysical knowledge. This book is of course a sizable one, and this reviewer did not read it in its entirety, but instead focused on those sections that addressed the new developments since the first edition.

One of the interesting topics that are discussed in the book whose explanation was not found in the first edition is that of gamma ray bursts. After a brief historical discussion of their first detection, the authors address the question as to the origin of the bursts, i.e. whether galactic or extragalactic. They perform some rudimentary calculations that show how energetic the bursts must be if they were located in the solar system or from a distant galaxy. Early thinking on the cause of gamma ray bursts associated them with neutron stars, but the authors explain the problems with this explanation, and most interestingly, give arguments that support the assertion that there is an edge to the distribution of the gamma sources. Clever observational techniques resulted in the conclusion that gamma ray bursts are extragalactic. The `collapsar' and `supranova' models of gamma ray bursts are discussed, but the discussion is way too brief for those who want the in-depth details of these models. However the authors give up-to-date references for readers who want to dig deeper. From a perusal of these references it is apparent that the supranova model has gained the most popularity at the present time, even though some of the observations cannot as yet be reconciled with this model.

Another topic of great current interest is that of dark matter, which is discussed in the last chapter of the book, and which the authors describe as one of the most important theoretical issues in cosmological astrophysics. This discussion is also short, but references are given, and its inclusion since the first edition reflects the theoretical interest. The paucity of experimental evidence for the candidates of dark matter has stymied theoretical developments, with most of the effort devoted to putting bounds on the candidates, such as axions and weakly interacting massive particles.

No doubt this book will continue to be used in the classroom in years to come, and new discoveries will be included in future editions. With the CERN collider coming on line in the next few years, everyone interested will see the interplay between high-energy physics and astrophysics. The collider will give the theoretical astrophysical community new bounds on cosmological quantities, and in fact may open up whole new lines of research, all of it exciting, and proof positive that the twenty-first century is the most exciting time to be alive.

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A good introduction for undergraduate students

As a PhD student, after a brief review of the book, I can say that it is a soft general introduction to astrophysics for students that are not concerned in that matter. A specialistic book is necessary to deeply enter in a specific field of astrophysics. Anyway, it is a good initiation to astrophysics in general.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, Second Edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the dramatic changes and advancements in astrophysics that have occurred over the past decade. The Second Edition of this market-leading book has been updated to include the latest results from relevant fields of astrophysics and advances in our theoretical understanding of astrophysical phenomena. The Tools of Astronomy: The Celestial Sphere, Celestial Mechanics, The Continuous Spectrum of Light, The Theory of Special Relativity, The Interaction of Light and Matter, Telescopes; The Nature of Stars: Binary Systems and Stellar Parameters, The Classification of Stellar Spectra, Stellar Atmospheres, The Interiors of Stars, The Sun, The Process of Star Formation, Post-Main-Sequence Stellar Evolution, Stellar Pulsation, Supernovae, The Degenerate Remnants of Stars, Black Holes, Close Binary Star Systems; Planetary Systems: Physical Processes in the Solar System, The Terrestrial Planets, The Jovian Worlds, Minor Bodies of the Solar System, The Formation of Planetary Systems; Galaxies and the Universe: The Milky Way Galaxy, The Nature of Galaxies, Galactic Evolution, The Structure of the Universe, Active Galaxies, Cosmology, The Early Universe; Astronomical and Physical Constants, Unit Conversions Between SI and cgs, Solar System Data, The Constellations, The Brightest Stars, The Nearest Stars, Stellar Data, The Messier Catalog, Constants, A Constants Module for Fortran 95 (Available as a C++ header file), Orbits, A Planetary Orbit Code (Available as Fortran 95 and C++ command line versions, and Windows GUI), TwoStars, A Binary Star Code (Generates synthetic light and radial velocity curves; available as Fortran 95 and C++ command line versions, and Windows GUI), StatStar, A Stellar Structure Code (Available as Fortran 95 and C++ command line versions, and Windows GUI), StatStar, Stellar Models, Galaxy, A Tidal Interaction Code (Available as Java), WMAP Data. For all readers interested in moden astrophysics.

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